Despite the “electronic age,” there is still demand for print services. Print service providers (PSPs) fulfill the demand for print services by printing everything from photographs and brochures, to course materials, periodicals and books. In a modern PSP facility, the management sets targets for average production based on experience and various resource projections. Resources include, but are not limited to, budget considerations (both time and money), equipment (downtime for repairs, cleaning, etc.), and labor (hiring expertise, allotting for planned days off in addition to unplanned sick days, etc.).
Sensing and tracking products, parts, equipment status, and worker activities during the production cycle is common practice in most other manufacturing industries. Now PSPs are also embracing the digital transformation, and as a result, are starting to collect operational information. The data collected can be used to measure the “health” of the PSP facility, identify and address issues, and inform decision making to improve the efficiency. These PSPs are more nimble, able to adapt to market conditions faster, and ultimately help to ensure sustained growth.
Current practice, however, implements ad-hoc data logging. That is, PSPs usually store any data that can possibly be gathered, indiscriminately, in order to be safe, regardless of whether the data is useful or not. The data is often stored in raw format, in backup drives or log files, making it difficult to utilize productively. This makes the analysis of the data much more difficult due to the large amount of data and diverse quality of the data (which can be incomplete or corrupted).
While it is relatively inexpensive to acquire and store digital data, retrieving and analyzing the information in a timely manner can be time consuming and expensive. In practice, the deluge of information usually means that the data is stored in large databases or backup files, and often forgotten unless there is a major production issue. Only then is an investigative team formed to go back through the massive backlog of data and try to understand the cause of the issue, and take corrective action to prevent the same issue from occurring again in the future.
In more advanced systems, basic statistics may be calculated automatically for the digital components of the PSP. For example, local hardware and queue statistics may be provided to the press operator or floor manager. But these systems only provide a limited understanding of potential issues to the operators, and typically provide little if any information concerning individual jobs.
For the sections of the PSP that contain analog devices, the process characteristics during production are often entirely ignored. Printed sheets may be placed in folders and used by the managers “walking the floor” to keep track of the work in progress. Once the job is complete, these sheets may be saved for some time in case issues arise, but are eventually discarded. These sections of the PSP are referred as “digital dead zones.”
Process statistics (e.g., Takt time) are usually only estimated once during the initial floor layout and never reviewed again until the next major revision of the production floor layout. This combination of factors makes it difficult, if not impossible, to gain a good understanding of the PSP operations in real time.